Where Metaphors Go To Die

Valerie Jarret, senior adviser to and long time confidante of Barack Obama, insisted that Fox News was biased before changing her mind.

She also delivered two mangled metaphors.  The first was a Freudian slip, or a Kinsleyian gaffe - this is my own transcription, so bear with me.  Ms. Jarrett was describing the Administration's strategy of responding to criticism from the media:

"When we see somebody distorting the truth we're going to call them on the carpet for that."

Surely she is aware of the power implications of the phrase "called on the carpet".  The boss, or the master of the house, has a carpet; the underling does not.  That is quite different from "calling someone out".  The humblest blogger could call out Barack Obama; he could not call Obama to the carpet.

However, Ms. Jarrett backpedaled from the notion that the White House was powerful just a few sentences later when she informed the world that Team Obama intended to "speak truth to power" in rebutting criticism from Fox News, town hall protestors, or anyone else.

News flash for Valerie - You are the power.  We might even say, you are now The Man.  Well, until Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck says otherwise, evidently.

Comments

[What a bunch of pusillanimous so and sos.]

Hah, the bullies are starting to whine.
=======================

[Captain Hate]

Great, you just sent out the Bat Signal to the Semantic tapeworm with that title.

[sbw]

Like Obama, just because the lips are moving doesn't mean she has something to say.

[sbw]

Did I say on an earlier thread that we are think of changing our policy of avoiding at least one word that some people may find offensive.

We think that there is no substitute for the word 'bullshit' for the reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of what one says.

If the political elite engages in bullshit, we ought to be able to say so in our editorials.

In my new-found brazenness I declined to substitute an asterisk for the "i" in that word in this post.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

It was just a slip of the tongue. She meant "speak power to truth."

[Charlie (Colorado)]

I'm with you.

In any case, I've always felt that if it was something my grandmother would say, it ought to be acceptable.

Fortunately, grandma swore like a sailor.

[LTC John]

Perhaps she could power truth on the carpet?

[PD]

Hah, the bullies are starting to whine.

Yeah, and how stupid do they look doing so? The browbeaters complain about being victims.

Kinda like the Jihadists always talking about how they're superior to everyone else because of their one true religiion, and that they should be able to kill anyone who disagrees and won't convert, then turning around and complaining that they're victims of so much oppression by the West.

[Ranger]

Looks like CNN has given its crew some new guidance to get them out of the basement. Can you imagine a CNN type asking that embarrasing followup a week ago?

[Fresh Air]

CNN is last in the ratings again. CNBC lost 50% of their viewers in October. Newspapers were down 20% annualized in circulation during the first six months. What am I forgetting? Oh yeah, this....

Angry Journalist #9715:

The local bank denied me a $3,000 loan that I DESPERATELY need!

The bank’s reasoning: I don’t make nearly enough money as a reporter to justify the loan.

See, kids, what a career in journalism will get you :(

Savor a nice tall mug of frosty cold Schadenfreude, the brew of choice of the MSM!

[Fresh Air]

P.S. Pukes.

[Ranger]

It's a slim chance, but maybe the MSM will get back to basics and start some real reporting on the Obama scam to save their own sorry butts.

[Soylent Red]

I believe this exchange aptly illustrates the insidiousness of The Man.

You see, if you fight The Man, The Man will resist you. But as you begin to succeed, The Man goes away. And as you sit around congratulating yourself on defeating The Man, suddenly people are fighting you!

How can this be?

Obviously you cannot be The Man, because you achieved your position of power by fighting The Man. Therefore, it must follow that since you fight The Man, anyone fighting with you must be...you guessed it...

The Man.

But now your most effective weapons in fighting The Man are useless. What good is a bumper sticker or ratty t-shirt that says "Don't let The Man get you down", when really The Man is simply trying to re-establish his authority. Protests lack that special anti-social elan they once had. People get all offended when you paint Hitler mustaches on The, formerly powerful but now just regular dude, Man.

That bastard has turned the tables on you again. Is there no end to the treachery of The Man?

And so in your rage you have no alternative but to call Jane Hamsher and commiserate on your misfortune while eating Cookie Dough ice cream straight from the box and decrying the manifold crimes and offenses of The Man.

[Extraneus]

You are The Man.

[osıɔɹɐu]

THey control not only the Presidency, the Congress, the academy, the major Networks with one notable exception. "Fight the Power, you've got to fight the power that be"

[Gmax]

What are ya gonna do, just abandon a perfectly good phrase, like "stick it to the man" just cuz you made it to the top? No I say, stick with the one that brung ya. Let all of those real journalists sort it out, and just sit back and enjoy the laugh.

[Gregory Koster]

No no, TM, you are misreading the 'carpet" chunk. Plainly Jarrett has in mind the old spring ritual of taking carpets outside, hanging them, and beating the dust out of them. Of course this was done by the household servants, which just proves that Jarrett is a raaaaaaaaaacccccciissssstttt/

Just like the rest of us.

Ranger, I'm dismayerd to see that you've taken up mainlining it into a vein instead of snorting it. Reporting the truth? No, the press has decided to grovel to The Once in return for bailouts, the hell with truth. Even if you are right, it's not easy to reestablish the habit of reading newspapers and magazines after breaking it. Even if, say, Anderson Cooper suddenly started covering Tea Parties honestly, who'd trust him?

[Soylent Red]

Extraneous:

Oh sure, I am now. But have we learned nothing here tonight?

[Ignatz]

--Perhaps she could power truth on the carpet?--

I believe that is Hillary's bailiwick.

[Extraneus]

lol

Bad boy.

[PD]

Obama Barackette

Maybe the birth certificate controversy should be over whether or not Obama is a little girl. Because he's acting like one

[Melinda Romanoff]

PD-

That.

Is funny.

[Melinda Romanoff]

One can never be mocked enough.

(or is it bocked? I can never remember, come October.)

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

Fox's new slogan "Truth to Bullshit". Yeah, that's the ticket.

[PD]

That's something of an insult to little girls, of course.

I imagine all our JOM ladies even when young were about 100 times tougher than Obama is now. 'specially clarice with the pistola-ettes.

[osıɔɹɐu]

No, he's more like Stewie on Family Guy, which explains why he hired Peter Griffith
as his spokesman

[centralcal]

oh, for gawd's sake, Narciso! What has Hit done to you? Flipped you upside down! Good grief....

[Melinda Romanoff]

PD-

Don't do that!

She brandishes those junior jezails every chance she gets.

Not good on the furniture.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Ignatz-

That.

Might be even funnier, and worse.

[osıɔɹɐu]

No, Anderson Vanderbilt, formerly on the Mole with Kathy Griffin (what fresh hell is this) won't get things right within a furlong. There is a degree of diminishing
returns with all this Isvestia/TASS/Pravda
or Granma/Juventud REbelde/ type coverage,
I'd say a quarter of their audience, si probably the Newsbuster, Gateway Pundit,
demographic, who want to see how far they can descend, till they touch Chtluthu's tentacles at R'Lyeh I think.

[Rocco]

Valerie Jarret, senior adviser to and long time confidante of Barack Obama

And it's important to remember that there's only one degree of separation between Barack Obama, Valerie's F-I-L Vernon Jarrett and Frank Marshall Davis. Vernon Jarrett and FMD both frequented the South Side Community Art Center, a hangout for communists members during the 40's.

[Neo]

Next thing, you know, they'll be sticking it to The Man

[osıɔɹɐu]

This example of what they are doing to Scalia's words, is emblematic of the trend, in the LUN:

[Ann]

I have been trying to figure out the mop analogy in Obama's speeches. Here is his latest: THE PRESIDENT: Hello, Virginia!

When I showed up after inauguration, they had left a big mess on the floor. (Applause.) So I got a mop, and I started cleaning up their mess. That’s okay, I don’t mind. (Applause.)

But you know -- you know, it does bother me when they start saying, “You’re not mopping fast enough. You’re not holding the mop the right way.” (Laughter.) My attitude is, why don’t you grab a mop? (Applause.)

I think Axelrod is very clever. He knows how to use racially derisive language to anger and intimidate a crowd in a very liberal nuance way. (Barf)

I just hope that the Hate Crimes Bill bites them in the arse. Because there is no doubt in my mind that it will.

Did you ever think you would see such a hateful, partisan, anti-American, thin skinned, pantywaist, surrender monkey as this incredible "thumbing a ride" president?

Out of guilt, Americans have laid upon his doorstep and his wife every excuse you need to exceed in this country without trying. And what do we get? Blame, shame, dead Americans and an attempt to defeat the last best hope of man on earth.

Count me out !

[daddy]

Byron York on Greta says the Ban on ACORN Federal Funding ends Saturday at Midnight. Is that before the imported voters arrive in elections in Virginia, Jersey and NY 23, or after?

[daddy]

And I like "Carpet-bombing the truth with power."

Maybe that's what she meant.

[daddy]

Where Metawhores Go To Die?

I'd say Celebrity Jeopardy TM.

First it was Wolf Blitzer of CNN tanking into negative territory and losing by 68,000 bucks to a Desperate Housewife and Conan's old sidekick, Andy.

Now it's the very cute ">http://www.nypost.com/t/Soledad_O'Brien"> Soledad O'Brien's turn, ">http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/anchors_sink_on_jeopardy_otdWknnBnpH2jCseGGrJLL"> getting whipped by Spinal Tap's Lead Singer and "Skyhook" Abdul Jabbar.

Thankfully an anonymous unbiased CNN insider was on hand with the following impartial commentary:

"They are reporters, not trivia experts. And the buzzer is complicated. It's not activated until Alex [Trebek] finishes the last syllable of the question. If you hit the button too soon, nothing happens."

Well at least in Soledad's case I think she knows a wise Latina when she sees one. The Wolfster, I'm not so sure.

Oh, and the Headline of the Story:

"Anchors sink on 'Jeopardy'.

Anybody got a letter 'T' handy to loan to the headline writer?

[pops]

Since Reid and Pelosi had been in charge for two years before Obama got their, I guess he is cleaning up their messes.

They must have gotten all Wee Wee'd Up.

So this Valeria Jarrett is Obamas big brain behind the scenes...WOW, that explains alot.

[Dave B]

I'll interpret "the American people" in the Obama Administration; "people dumb enough, ill informed enough, with a victim mentality, mindless enough to stand in line for hours for "Obama money", and other such lemmings that we can lie to on a daily basis that actually will buy our bullshit until such time as we have complete control."

[peter]

The buzzer is complicated? That is the funniest thing I have heard in a long time.

[Cecil Turner]

Now it's the very cute Soledad O'Brien's turn . . .

Watched that one, it was a riot. My daughter couldn't figure out what was so amusing about a fake rock star stomping a supposedly well-educated anchor (and trust me, it wasn't as close as the score suggests). A couple of youtube clips later, and we were all laughing. Best bit was Stonehenge:

David St. Hubbins: I do not, for one, think that the problem was that the band was down. I think that the problem *may* have been, that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being *crushed* by a *dwarf*. Alright? That tended to understate the hugeness of the object.

Soledad and Nigel might've made a good match (if he stayed in character).

[Daddy]

Here's interesting news.

City of Chicago say's it's going to pay whistleblower money to ">http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/A-City-of-Stool-Pigeons-66367287.html"> citizens who turn in Tax Cheats.

Seems to me (having seen the ACORN videos) all anyone'd have to do would be to take a metal detector and walk out in the backyard of any ACORN Employee or any whorehouse in the City, and simply dig up anything 'bout the size of a Coffee Can.

Opportunity knocks Melinda!

[Daddy]

Here's a good talking point, adapted from the BBC Global Warming Correspondent, ">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/default.stm"> Richard Black, which squishy GOPer's, needing an excuse to vote against the higher taxes inherant in Government Run Health Care, can use to good effect:

---We can't afford the higher taxes in the Government's Health Care Plan because we need to be paying 3rd world countries to NOT drill for oil in order to save Gaia.---

From the Beeb: "The basic idea is that if Western countries are as concerned about greenhouse gas emissions and indigenous rights and biodiversity as they profess to be, they can and should pay Ecuador not to drill...

The proposal is couched in terms of avoiding emissions from burning the oil. At about 400 million tonnes of CO2, the government estimates this is roughly equivalent to Ecuador's total emissions for 13 years.

(This doesn't factor in any added benefit of avoiding emissions by keeping the forest intact.)

The sum of $350m per year for 10 years - totalling about half of the oilfield's estimated value - was suggested as a reasonable price."

See, it's got poor folks, forests, CO2, and probl'y even some cute animal pix if required. Ergo, if Olympia Snowe or Newt or the Maverick or whomever need some backbone to strangle ObamaCare in it's crib, I'd recommend the moral high ground of saving Equadorian peasants first.

[daddy]

Hey, That just got me thinking.

Remember how when Michelle Obama tried to plant a garden in the backyard of the White House, but she couldn't because of all the lead in the backyard.

What's Coffee Can's made out of anyway?

[bgates]

Daddy, that's quite a story. I was confused by this objection to the plan:

Firstly, if there is a thirst for fuel, it will be slaked; Ecuador would be rewarded for keeping its oil in the ground, but companies would obtain it from elsewhere

That can't be right. Everybody knows that the Senate's defense of Alaska's Mosquito Coast has kept evil Sarah Palin from killing the earth. If any of this supposed "fuel slaking" had been going on, preventing drilling in ANWR in the name of climate stasis would be just a cheap ploy to win votes from muddleheaded greenie wannabes.

[bunky]

if you can't stand the heat go make me some suasage.

[Captain Hate]

Heavyweight Thomas Frank weights in with "Bammy is right about Fox News but I wish he'd been less clumsy in his attacks on them". That's really speaking trufe to pauer, Tommy boy. LUN

[Extraneus]

The basic idea is that if Western countries are as concerned about greenhouse gas emissions and indigenous rights and biodiversity as they profess to be, they can and should pay Ecuador not to drill...

This is perfection. How much can we pay Saudi Arabia and Russia not to drill? And Venezuela and Yemen.

[Janet]

The man we need to be fighting is The Expert Man. These damn "experts" are ruining our country. Health care experts, climate experts, education experts, environmental experts,... . I've got college tuition, new brakes for my car, and new gutters on my house to pay for. I can't afford to indulge other people's hobbies, or whatever they're "into".

[Cecil Turner]

How serious are we about ghg emissions? Not very, apparently. Caught a doozy of a program on NPR on the radio this morning, as China admits it can't even be bothered to reduce its rate of increase of greenhouse gas emissions. Obama's China Visit Unlikely To Produce Climate Deal:

However Stern admitted that differences still remain, particularly over US demands for China to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

They absolutely have to cap their emissions in the sense of having them reduce significantly as compared to where their trendline is. China could make a reduction twice as ambitious as the US is doing and still, that would still involve their emissions going up somewhere from where they are now.

But Beijing is resisting US pressure, arguing it's using other measures. It's already announced a goal of improving energy efficiency by 20 percent in the five years to 2010. It's also planting trees over an area the size of California. Zhou Fengqi from Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences spells out China's line that emission caps would damage its development:

We could not limit the amount of food for child, because a child needs to grow. He needs more than the adult. So we cannot use the caps.

This despite the fact that China is now the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to the International Energy Agency. But China likes to point out that its cumulative emissions are a quarter of America's. [caveat emptor, hand transcript]

See, it's not about climate, it's about fairness (i.e., "you guys emitted a lot and have to stop until we catch up to you economically"). Somehow I suspect this zero-sum economic game will appeal more to those with a communist party background than to the average American. Except President Obama and his advisers, of course.

[Cecil Turner]

Oh, and just found this little gem:CNN’s Soledad O’Brien Defends Network’s Abysmal [Jeopardy] Performance

It's much, much harder than it looks. You have to time it exactly right." What's more, she said, you start getting stressed out about not being able to buzz in properly, and that's when everything falls apart. "You start focusing on how you're trying to judge the buzzer," she went on, the horror clearly coming back to her. "So if you get too focused on that, when they come to you, you're like, 'Wait, what was the question?' You sort of blank. I realize it sounds like I'm making excuses, but truly it's really hard!"

Word on the street is, it's even harder if you're a moron.

[Janet]

LUN A new article by Jack Cashill at Am. Thinker

[Neo]

Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) finally gets his pound of flesh from the "Kos Nation" for making him an "I"

revenge is a dish best served cold

[Captain Hate]

O/T Listening to Laura Ingraham going ballistic on the Donks using children in an incredibly sappy ad for BammyDontCare. Chuck Todd of NBC is ridiculing Harry Reid's game of chicken and the oncoming car.

[It's a bad disease. Energy footprint is worth talking about, carbon footprint is bogus.]

Cecil, I've been saying for over a year that India and China intend to use Copenhagen to shakedown the developed nations over 'carbon guilt'. I even suspect that the scientists of the BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India and China are skeptical enough to know that the CO2=AGW paradigm is sadly lacking.

It looks like they aren't quite going to get away with it; no one has any money to give anyway. But ongoing, a measure of our own future competitiveness is how successfully we combat the pathology of carbon guilt.
===============================

[Janet]

Soylent Red - Your post at 8:46 about The Man was excellent. JOM posters are the best.

[I scream.]

Yep, Janet, that 'Cookie Dough ice cream straight from the box' is definitely a keeper. Did you know ice cream was Marlin Brando's failing?
==========================

[Captain Hate]

Did you know ice cream was Marlin Brando's failing?

Well that and raising children....

When Coppola was dealing with all the nightmares of filming Apocalypse Now, a major problem was when Brando showed up too fat to play the character as written so they had to rewrite the ending. Reporters covering the filming were upset that Brando never showed up for pressers and bitched about it to Coppola who responded that "Mr Brando is very sensitive about his weight"; to which one reporter asked "Is that why he eats a gallon of ice cream at a sitting"?

[Porchlight]

Captain,

Hearts of Darkness, the "making of" Apocalypse Now, is imho a better film than its subject. What do you think?

[We all scream.]

It's the cold, the sweet, and the fat. Probably something to do with milk, too.
=================================

[Cost effective, without a doubt.]

Do you suppose feeding alarmists ice cream would assuage their carbon guilt?
===============================

[Captain Hate]

Porch, I agree although, with all its nuttiness and incoherence, I still liked parts of the original. But Hearts of Darkness was absolutely fascinating, one of the best docs I've ever seen.

[Dave (in MA)]

OT: Greetings from a Blue state, folks:

Cambridge - Bomb squad responds to home for cannon ball .

-and-

Authorities summoned -

...police cars, fire trucks, and a bomb squad... ...naval station’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal team... ...routinely responds to police department calls for assistance in removing explosive military material...

...nearly twenty personnel at the scene, the cannonball was x-rayed and removed in an insulated container...

The cannonball is currently in a storage facility at Naval Station Newport. It will be properly detonated and disposed of soon.

In their defense, someone could've hurt their toe.

[clarice]

Soylent was fantastic this morning.
Janet linked to this Cashille article but I'm giving you more on it:

Jack Cashill has a long piece explaining why Ayers wrote Dreams for Obama http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/what_bill_ayers_saw_in_barack.html>It was to be his ticket to ed reform --

here's a sum up:

To advance Obama's career, Ayers finished up Dreams, got Obama appointed chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant, and held a fundraiser for his state senate run in his Chicago home, all in 1995.

In a Salon interview a year ago, Ayers gave a glimpse into his motivations for helping Obama, and they were not as "Manchurian" as they might seem in retrospect.

"Everyone who knew him thought that he was politically ambitious," said Ayers of Obama. "For the first two years, I thought, his ambition is so huge that he wants to be mayor of Chicago."

The political calculus behind that ambition helped shape Dreams. This was a careful book written to launch the career of a deeply indebted and highly malleable Chicago politician, one who saw the world through white eyes, as Ayers did, but one who could articulate the city's real problems in words that Ayers could not use.

Ayers succeeded all too well. As president, Obama does him little good on the ground in Chicago and, for the moment at least, has made his lifelong anti-American project suspect.

Lest Obama forget where he came from, Ayers' recent admissions of having written Dreams, however ironic their delivery, remind Obama who put him in the White House and who can take him out. To adopt a nautical metaphor: a shot across the bow.

[sbw]

Brando earned his $3m in "Apocalypse Now" for this gem:

"It is impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.

I remember when I was with special forces.... It seems a thousand centuries ago -- we went into a camp to inoculate the children. We'd left the camp after we'd inoculated the children for Polio and this old man came running after us, And he was crying and he couldn't say....

"We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of. . . little arms. And, I remember, . . . I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized, like I was shot.... Like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God, the genius of that! The genius, the will to do thatl Perfect and complete. Crystaline. Pure.

"Then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand it. These were not monsters, they were men; trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who have families, who have children, who are filled with love, but they have strength. . . to do that.

"If I had ten divisions of these men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly.

"You have to have men who are moral, and at the same time, who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill. . . without feeling, without passion, without judgment; - without judgment, because it's judgment that defeats us.

"I worry that my son might not understand what I've tried to be. And if I were to be killed, Willard, I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything: everything I did, everything I saw. Because there is nothing I detest more than the stench of. . . lies. And if you understand me, Willard, you will do this for me."

[sbw]

Typepad? Did you swallow my Brando post?

[sbw]

[Sometimes you just have to kick the software in the shins.]

[Musta been a credentialed moron.]

Heh, can anyone say 'oral vaccine'. The Salk one was needles, but was quickly supplanted by the oral Sabin, which targeted the gut, where the natural virus does its thing.

I'm a little surprised that passed the technical adviser.
==============================

[Morons, that's what they are.]

c, he's trying to save b's ass, and all three of them are in over their heads.
===============================

[clarice]

Three of them?
Ayers-one
Obama-two.
What am I missing?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

And the buzzer is complicated. It's not activated until Alex [Trebek] finishes the last syllable of the question. If you hit the button too soon, nothing happens."

The implication here is that CNN anchors are too dumb to figure out a button, or have the slowest reaction times of all these folks.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Heh, can anyone say 'oral vaccine'. The Salk one was needles, but was quickly supplanted by the oral Sabin, which targeted the gut, where the natural virus does its thing.

Kim, honey, it wasn't supplanted by Sabin. Sabin vaccine spoils easily. Salk (inactivated) vaccines are still used widely in areas that have poor refrigeration and especially if they don't have a lot of wild virus.

[BR]

Can I call him, Kim honey, too?

[glasater]

GMAC is going back to the well for more funds..

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Can I call him, Kim honey, too?

Don't see why not. Assuming you didn't mean the clause between the commas as an aside.

[mockmook]

Don't give the kids oral vaccines, else, this time, they'll hack off their heads...

----

Regarding the cannon ball: It could be poor reporting. The "cannon ball" may have been a hollow, fused, "cannon ball" bomb.

Someone more informed can correct me, but I think it was fused "balls" that were the "bombs bursting in air" at Fort McHenry.

[Neo]

So how did TM miss this gem from Paul Krugman

"But the teabaggers have come and gone"

Coming from the guy who predicted 9 of the last 2 recessions, I’ll withhold judgement as to this statement's validity until he has repeated it at least 3 more times.

[Gracie]

Hee, Charlie honey, this is getting funnier and funnier :) But I don't have either of your phone numbers!

[sbw]

Say 'goodnight', Gracie.

[Daddy]

TC,

Don't know if it's Bruichladdich, but I think it's been properly ">http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/environment/090909/shackletons-whisky"> aged.

[Gracie's Better Half]

Goodnight, Gracie... honey.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Heh, can anyone say 'oral vaccine'. The Salk one was needles, but was quickly supplanted by the oral Sabin, which targeted the gut, where the natural virus does its thing.

My son had his polio SHOT when he was still a toddler. When he was somewhere around six years old, the Navy informed us that all children had to receive the oral vaccine since it was considered much better than the shot.

Then when he was about ten or eleven, I was told to bring him in for a SHOT since the oral vaccine wasn't as good. When they checked his record and saw he'd already had the shot several years earlier, they didn't make him get another one. Since then, I've never trusted the oral vaccine.

[Porchlight]

with all its nuttiness and incoherence, I still liked parts of the original.

True, Captain, it is wild. Glad to hear you enjoyed Hearts of Darkness as much as I did, though.

[bunky]

"he went in the special forces... and his methods became.....unsound"

[Janet]

Great article by the Anchoress LUN
About the latest sad tv episode that ridicules Christianity. Here's a bit...

"It takes no courage for an rich, unbelieving “artist” to piss on Christ. After all, that’s been done before. And Jesus voluntarily submitted himself to much worse, which means nothing an “artist” does to any image of Christ can do anything but reflect on the spiritual poverty of the “artist,” himself. For an “artist” to use Jesus for a cheap joke is about as “courageous” and “bold” as making a joke about George W. Bush before an audience of like-thinkers; it takes no courage at all."

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Well, Sara, define "better" and "worse". The Salk vaccine (injection) is dead vius; it doesn't spoil as readily, but it doesn't provide as much resistance to gastric polio, although it seems to prevent both the immediate paralysis and post-polio syndrome very effectively. The Sabin (oral) gives similar resistance, better resistance to gastric infections, but rarely causes actual polio (only about 1 per 750,000 cases.)

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Charlie:

I, as a lay person, have no dog in either hunt. Both my kids got both, I think as much because of their ages. It just seemed strange that I'd have to give them the double dose after the oral vaccine came out and then a few years later the decision was reversed again.

I think my kids got double protection because for a few years, the medical profession (at least those at Navy Hospital, San Diego) was in flux as to which was the more effective protection and they happened to be at the age where they'd already had the shots before the oral was available. I doubt that problem comes up at all now.

Also, the military was always more insistent that family members have the full range of available inoculations for all sorts of diseases since Dads, at that time, were spending lots of their time in S.E. Asia and other places where diseases are rampant.

[I'm surprised, though; I thought Salk was relic of the '50s.]

The 'b' is for Bernardine, clarice.

Thanks, Chaco, for the vaccine info. Learn several new things every day.
=======================

[Sounds like they use the oral in the boonier places rather than the other way around..]

Ah, even more critically, the presence or absence of wild polio virus determines the choice of the injectable inactivated and the oral live virus. The oral is preferred where the virus is still endemic, because of the need for it to be more effective.

Places where natural outbreaks still occur? Nigeria, India, Pakistan and ta dah Afghanistan.
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[Charlie (Colorado)]

The oral is preferred where the virus is still endemic, because of the need for it to be more effective.

Well, almost. Current formulations of the inactive virus vaccine are 99 percent effective with three shots, vs 95 percent for the oral, but with only one dose required. So you could argue the inactive virus injection is "more effective"in some sense. But since the oral is oral, it's better at blocking the GI route of infection, and since oral is a live virus, it's also somewhat communicable itself — you can "catch" the immunity from someone else who has been immunized.

[Janet]

Here are some very clever videos from CWA via Hot air. LUN
....about Obamacare

[daddy]

"The implication here is that CNN anchors are too dumb to figure out a button, or have the slowest reaction times of all these folks."

Are these the same people that gave grief to Dick Nixon's Secretary, Rose Mary Woods, for being a tad slow with her toe on some Tape Recorder Button?

[Gregory Koster]

Prochlight, sbw, let me butt in: APOCALPYSE NOW is a reeking hunk of junk with 3 millon bucks being blown on a slab of blubber who should have gotten out after saying "I coulda been..." . If that imbecile Coppola insisted on bringing Conrad up to date, he should have skipped Vietnam, and looked inland, to the killing fields of Cambodia. The Cambodians went through an inferno easily comparable to Conrad's African Congo, and far exceeding the gruesomeness of Vietnam. Yes, Coppola would have had to give up liberal bigotry, but he too, could have been a contender, instead of a bum. Conrad's novella was disgraced and degraded by such ninnies.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Are these the same people that gave grief to Dick Nixon's Secretary, Rose Mary Woods, for being a tad slow with her toe on some Tape Recorder Button?

Well, mostly no — most of them hadn't even been born then.

[Janet]

Here is a great video of Congressman Mike Rogers. Government's formula for making the strong weak. LUN

[BR]

Having been in Leopoldtville in '73 as a young girl, I thought Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski's "Heart of Darkness" was tame compared to what I saw of the Congo, and conversely, I thought "Apocalypse Now" quite powerful, showing the nutso CIA guy cutting himself with glass (Sheen), the drug-induced friendly fire, ha, who can forget the surfing scenes in the middle of the war, the music-blaring helicopters and of course the Brandon character, I thought was much worse than Conrad's Mr. Kurtz.

There's one line, though, from the novel that I shall always treasure, although not pertaining to a river: "...the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention."

[sbw]

Gregory, I could lecture for a semester on that passage and not touch the same concept twice. The motion picture may suck, but the monologue is brilliant even though neither Coppola nor Brando saw its wisdom.

Morality is the creation of those who choose to live under its protective umbrella and lift themselves a fraction above the law of the jungle. And those who choose by their actions to reject living under the umbrella's protection have no reason for morality to protect them when they are caught.

Pacifists and generals of quality understand that war is a nasty place to be and should be avoided, if possible. But those of us who understand morality reserve the right to protect ourselves by any means necessary.

Let every pseudo-liberal blanch at what I say.

[sbw]

From other stuff I have been writing on Conrad:

Joseph Conrad’s Marlowe is ambivalent about history and morality. Marlowe said Jim was not clear to him, as we are not clear to ourselves. Henry James and Joseph Conrad put the reader in the action, full participants in uncertainty and subjectivity that for us came to a head after World War II. Conrad, after the Congo, turned away from the idea of idealism.

Conrad’s Colonel Kurtz was an educated man with refined values, of hollow character. Conrad’s Marlowe says Kurtz had gone mad, but did not nail down in what way. ‘He had something to say.’ ‘He had judged.’ ‘The horror.’ But, by what mechanism? Conrad may encourage self-knowledge, but he encouraged readers toward self-knowledge without providing a compass. Readers wandered in the wilderness for another century. For those who lived 50 years later after World War II, absent an absolute framework, how could one see clearly culture or personality they called character.

Conrad challenged idealistic colonization, but succeeding writers have yet to do more. Literature is always pitched as a way to understand people better, yet books frequently have a high school sophomore's understanding of human nature.

[Gregory Koster]

SBW, I bow to your posts and simultaneously denounce them as wrong:

a) "Conrad challenged idealistic colonization, but succeeding writers have yet to do more."

Now look what you've done. E.M. Forster is sobbing, heartbroken at that casual rending of A PASSAGE TO INDIA. Joyce Cary looks dismayed at the evisceration of MISTER JOHNSON. Paul Scott is drowning his sorrows over the corpse of his Raj Quartet. Et cetera, as Yul Brynner sang.

b): "Readers wandered in the wilderness for another century. For those who lived 50 years later after World War II, absent an absolute framework, how could one see clearly culture or personality they called character."

I started to kick this, but am dancing around swearing through gritted teeth. What is underneath this impenetrable granite?

c: The passage you cite: Here we go:

i) "It is impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means." Logically, the three million dollar blubber mass should have shut up at that point, having said that words are useless. Nope. Brace yourself for an appalling onslaught of rhetorical artillery:

ii) "Horror has a face and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies."

I thought Coppola was updating Joseph Conrad, not a G.K. Chesterton paradox that GK tossed off while hung over. Bah. "Love is Hate. War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength" wrote Orwell in NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR. Coppola thought this was true wisdom and stole for this line.

iii) "I remember when I was with special forces.... It seems a thousand centuries ago -- we went into a camp to inoculate the children. We'd left the camp after we'd inoculated the children for Polio and this old man came running after us, And he was crying and he couldn't say....

"We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of. . . little arms."

Special Forces inoculating Vietnamese children? For polio, instead of diptheria, pertussin, and tetanus? The chopped off arms are a straight steal from Conrad's rubber quota enforcers chopping off the hands of latex collector who came up short. Bah.

Better to listen to W.T. Sherman: "War is hell." This isn't hell, just liberal hate-America pornography. Coppola implies that the real horror is in what happened to the American soldiers. To Coppola, the Vietnamese are just so many gooks, morally superior to the depraved Americans, fodder to be tortured and slaughtered to show how bad Americans are. Be sure to toss in lots of gory special effects and loud raucous counterfeit music.

"War is hell." In every war, men, and it's almost always men, have committed atrocities that would have gotten them the electric chair in times of peace. Many of these men have returned and lived lives of apparent tranquility. Look at John Demjanjuk as an example. Such a man, far more disturbing than the crazed, murderous soldier of APOCALYPSE NOW because he appeared so normal, would flabbergast Coppola.

This soliloquy indulges in paradox: the wisdom of madness, the triviality of murder in fear, terror, and pain while the effect on the murderers is everything. Bah. This is liberal bigotry, worshiping power and violence as "real" just so long as the artist can escape when it gets too bad. Children can be excused at shutting their eyes at the scary parts of a film. Adults can not be excused for flinching while contemplating such horror, while trying to make sense of it. Such a task has defeated many great artists, who can only say: It doesn't mean anything. I think this is attitude is wrong, though I can't refute it. Nor can I object to such a conclusion after a sober, unflinching examination in the manner of A FAREWELL TO ARMS or THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE.

Coppola? Liberal bigotry that can fool itself while keeping an eye on the box office. A real artist would have taken on the challenge, and tried to adapt, say, ONE VERY HOT DAY, by David Halberstam. Halberstam himself went on to tremendous success as a liberal bigot, throwing aside facts when they didn't suit, but always keeping an eye on the box office (royalties in his case.) Yet this novel, written in his pre-BEST AND BRIGHTEST success, isn't your typical DH product. It's the product of close observation, unflinching, and an attempt to see realities. Unlike APOCALYPSE NOW, DH's Vietnamese are not fodder to be blown up to show a) how awful Americans are and b) only the effect on Americans is really important. That would have made a great film instead of the lurid bunk of APOCOLYPSE.

Coppola isn't the only one firing off barrages of rhetorical artillery. I hope this bombardment hasn't had the same effect on you that Verdun did on the French.

[sbw]

Gregory, too many concepts, any I would engage. Let's reduce the verbiage to the manageable significant. Set aside Post-colonialism and the failure of literature in the 20th century to develop character.

Morality is the creation of those who choose to live under its protective umbrella and, in so doing, lift themselves just a fraction above the rest of the animal kingdom who live the law of the jungle.

Those who by their actions choose to reject living under the umbrella's protection can have no expectation that morality will protect them when society turns ‘round on them to defend itself.

The reality of this ought to kick any pseudo-liberal in the gut.

If I missed something that gnaws at you, I'll try to address specifics.